Beyond marketization? The genesis of quality assessment criteria in the British university sector between 1985 and 1992

Abstract

This brief article is a consideration on the theme of Quality Assessment (QA) criteria in the British university sector. It will attempt to shed light on a variety of conceptualisations on this instrument which is commonly considered a means to achieve a more efficient university sector which can prosper by working on the quality of education that is delivered to students whilst at the same time responding to reforms, which have pushed for a greater “value-for-money” of public resources used by universities. Whereas the majority of recent literature give an overview of the current state of the university system, this article instead sheds a focus of quality assessment criteria on an aspect which is treated as a marginal detail, namely, the historical origins of these criteria. By bringing some historical evidence to the forefront, this article will show how an attentive reflection on the birth of quality assessment criteria can show some problematic aspects of literatures which tend to explain and study QA as instruments that contain a logic of some sort. When literatures of different approaches prioritise a logic at work for explaining the functioning of QA criteria, this article argues, they tend to ignore that the conception of QA was vested with a variety of interests of different agents.